6) The Classification of Human rights

Human rights are moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behavior, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law.

Human rights can be classified and organized in a number of different ways. At an international level the most common categorization of human rights has been to split them into:

• civil and political rights

• Economic, social and cultural rights.

1. Civil and political rights

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations and private individuals, and which ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the society and state without discrimination or oppression.

Civil rights include the ensuring of peoples' physical and mental integrity, life and safety; protection from discrimination on grounds such as race, gender, national origin, colour, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or disability; and individual rights such as privacy, the freedoms of thought and conscience, speech and expression, religion, the press, assembly and movement.

Political rights include natural justice (procedural fairness) in law, such as the rights of the accused, including the right to a fair trial; due process; the right to seek redress or a legal remedy; and rights of participation in civil society and politics such as freedom of association, the right to assemble, the right to petition, the right of self-defense, and the right to vote.

Civil and political rights form the original and main part of international human rights. They comprise the first portion of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (with economic, social and cultural rights comprising the second portion). The theory of three generations of human rights considers this group of rights to be "first-generation rights", and the theory of negative considers them to be generally negative rights.

Civil and political rights are enshrined in article 3 to 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Economic, social and cultural rights are enshrined in article 22 to 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

2. Economic, social and cultural rights

Economic, social and cultural rights are socio-economic human rights, such as the right to education, right to housing, right to adequate standard of living, right to health and the right to science and culture. Economic, social and cultural rights are recognized and protected in international and regional human rights instruments. Member states have a legal obligation to respect, protect and fulfill economic, social and cultural rights and are expected to take "progressive action" towards their fulfillment.

1) The right to education is a universal entitlement to education. This is recognized in the International as a human right that includes the right to free, compulsory primary education for all, an obligation to develop secondary education accessible to all, in particular by the progressive introduction of free secondary education, as well as an obligation to develop equitable access to higher education, ideally by the progressive introduction of free higher education.

2) The right to housing is recognized in a number of international human rights instruments. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the right to housing as part of the right.^[1] It states that:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, and housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

3) The right to an adequate standard of living is recognized as a human right in international human rights instruments and is understood to establish a minimum entitlement to food, clothing and housing at an adequate level.  The right to food and the right to housing have been further defined in human rights instruments

4) The right to science and culture is one of the economic, social and cultural rights claimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related documents of international human rights law. It recognizes that everyone has a right to participate in culture, to benefit from science and technology, and to protection of authorship.

5) The right to health is the economic, social and cultural right to a universal minimum standard of health to which all individuals are entitled.

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights recognizes a number of economic, social and cultural rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) is the primary international legal source of economic, social and cultural rights.